As I worked through the emotions elicited by 9-11, I asked myself: What can I do to prevent this from occurring again?

People are fighting mad at America. Do you think Evil incarnate walks this earth? If so, you should be praying right now, not reading this.

Can we eliminate their destructive capabilities? How? Can our nuclear bombs eliminate the America-haters? If we eliminate box-cutters, won't they just use sharp-edged credit cards or pencils to hijack the next plane (box-cutters don't kill people; people do.)?

Can our government defend us against the destructive capabilities of America-haters? No, our government grants visas to known hijackers.

Can we try to figure out why America-haters hate us, and try to eliminate their motivation? Is there any other way to prevent endless violent strikes against us?

What the Colonel said.

exactly... why bother being a superpower if we're too afraid to destroy those who would harm us and our country?  

Time to quit playing nice...

There it is....


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

Death to our enemies, nothing more.

You DO understand why the US doesn't negitiate with terrorists, don't you?  It's not some macho deal, it's because if you buckle a SINGLE time, you'll have a line around the block.

No third world shitbag dictates US policy.

We don't have to apologize for who and what we are and where we came from. We should be proud of our nation and it's (our) accomplishments. It would be assinine to think that we could make everyone like us. That being said I think that as long as people can get away with crimes against us they will continue to try. It's not the severity of punishment that deters but the surety of it. If we carry the biggest stick around and are not afraid to use it, that would help. This could get into a very deep conversation. Definitely not an easy answer.

That is EXACTLY my opinion on the subject.

STOP SELLING ARMS TO ISREAL , AND ANY OTHER SUPPORT THEY GET FROM US. THEN MAYBE OH .........NUKE EM TILL THEY GLOW.

Blaze-Of-Glory,


America will be hated until the day it ceases to exist.  There is nothing that we as Americans can do to prevent it.  That hate will occur through jealousy, fear, brainwashing, etc..  There is nothing we as Americans can do about it, as we do not control other countries.

The last thing we as Americans need to do is to Kowtow to the murderous ranting of our enemies.  You can not bargain with those who want you dead.  Their desired end result is for the death of you and other Americans, and will not stop until they realize that the cost of trying to kill Americans is too high, or they are dead.  Giving the murderers what they purportedly want is nothing more then postponing the deaths of more Americans.  They must be educated as to the true cost of trying to kill Americans.

without emotion, without question, we must exact revenge and justice from those involved and those that offer them assistance, no matter where they hide.  swift and horrible retribution is a must.
 
the fear of this certainty is the only thing that will keep them from coming here again.

How would this prevent people from hating the US?  They will just hate the US for some other reason.  There is no logic in hate.

To you who say "kill them": How? They are lurking inside our country, with box-cutters. If we wage a stronger military campaign on Muslim land, isn't there a good chance that third-party countries will side against America?

Don't tell me, "kill the entire U.N." unless you have a real strategy in mind for carrying this out. If you do, I'm curious.

Why isn't Switzerland as hated as we are?

Your fatalistic outlook disgusts me.'

What do you mean "how?"

First, any moron who tries to take over a plane with a boxcutter from Sept 11 forward will rue the day he is born.  The passengers will kill them.

Second, your world view is naive.  There are very few true fence sitters.  The US is generally already reviled, mostly out of pure jealousy, in the third world.  

You cannot base foreign policy on the perception of how other, insignificant countries might react.  Just accept that they hate us and there is nothing to be done to change their view, and proceed in the best interests of the US.

Why are you so afraid of other countries siding against the US?  Do you have to just go along with the crowd?  Do you have an overriding need to "just get along"?  What drives this fear inside of you?  Why do you fear conflict so much?  Did you have a problem childhood?  Have you had bad relationships in your life?  Do you just give up and roll over and play dead?

Because the Swiss are the doormats of the world.  They will roll over and take whatever their masters give to them, just like what you would do.

Everyone uses Swiss banks...

I have no doubt that America could take on any other country in the world in a war; however, when one country decides to go against us, there's a chance that many more will come with it. It'd be very tough, without Canadian and European support, to take on say the mideast, china, north korea, and the various ethnic groups that hate the US.

You can ignore Switzerland. You can't ignore the US, because we domainate the world economy, world media, science, the military, and ideas. We can't stop doing that, because that's who we are--free, dynamic, and attractive to all. Including the people out to kill us. They fear us in part because we present a vision of the future that's more compelling to the people than they do.

We need to hunt down and kill the violent people out to kill us. We must kill them first. Our aim must be true....

Who wants to adopt the Marine Corps' Rifleman's Credo to the situation?

"This is my nation. There are none like it, and this one is mine...."

Out with it man! What exactly are you proposing? You seem to be unnecessarily vague in many of your posts...

Who said anything about war?  I'm talking about public opinion.  I'm talking about doing what is right and just when all the other countries in the world are cowering under their beds because the big bad terrorists are gonna get them.

They took over a US Embassy, sovereign US territory, and held US citizens hostage for a year and a half, and we did nothing.

They blew up the Marine Barracks in Beirut: 241 dead, and we did nothing

They hijacked and blew up our planes, and we did nothing.

They killed Navy diver Petty Officer Robert Stethem and vacationing paraplegic Leon Klinghoffer, and we did nothing.

They killed Colonel Higgins in Beirut and Colonel Rowe in the Phillipines, and we did nothing.

They detonated a large quantity of high explosives inside the World Trade Center, and we did nothing.

They attacked the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and we did nothing.

They blew up US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and we did nothing.

After being encouraged for years by our lack of response, they hijacked four airliners full of Americans and jet fuel and flew three of them into large buildings full of more Americans.

Finally, we took the gloves off and started killing the bastards back. We have to operate "the Chicago way," as Sean Connery outlined in the movie "The Untouchables:

"They send one of yours to the hospital, you send ten of theirs to the morgue. That's the Chicago way. Now, what are you prepared to do?"

The French, of all people, have a term for it: "pour encourager les autres." To encourage the others, setting the example that, from now on, no one gets a free pass. Everyone can expect the hard squad or the smart bomb to come for their ass. If you use some filthy suicide tactic in your operation, your family will die for you as well. It's not a game they can play by those rules for long.

Because they take no responsibility in the world? (Or mind their own business depending on your POV...)

I have a feeling he/she is one of those Pseudo-intellectual types.  They feel they are above everyone else, and cower under the covers at night worried that the big bad terrorists will get them unless they give in to them completely.

It should be abhorrent to us all to indiscriminately kill our enemies and their families and whatever 'collateral damage' may be inflicted. We as the hated ones have the moral high ground and we should not allow that high ground to be given up in a fit of rage or knee jerk reactions. We, as a country, should not engage in wanton acts of violence that do nothing but escalate the violence and prolong the hatred. We should, however, seek out their leaders of hate and publicly obliterate their existence in ways that will cause mortal fear to overcome their religious zeal. We should find the 'money men' fiancing this hatred and make the remainder of their dramatically shortened lives replete with such misery and pain that there is no desire for anyone new to take their place. We should declare, openly, a new phase in this war against terror, a hunting season on individuals. Let every nation know that we are going to cross your borders, kill or imprison your citizens, and then leave again. Tell each nation that if they are very, very lucky, they will never know that we were there, and only our enemies will suffer. Our friends and noncombatants will not be harmed, but we will make the determination of who is and who is not our enemy. This new phase of the war on terror should not be accomplished with military divisions, squadrons, or even companies of our regular Army. We should make this a very 'personal' mission undertaken by very small units of highly trained soldiers and Marines. These small units can enter a country'under the radar', execute their mission and be out before an alarm is raised. We then have the divisions, squadrons, fleets and other units of our regular military on hand in case anything does go awry. A few of these missions will cause enough fear in the minds of our individual enemies to overcome the religious zeal in their hearts. You will then see a dramatic decrease in overt shows of hatred towards America.

Let them hate us, but they should hate us very quietly, hoping that we do not notice them. Let the message be;
"Burn Old Glory on CNN on a Saturday, be screaming in immense pain in a cell somewhere in Idaho by Monday night....with no relief in sight."

A few cases of, 'what happened to our leader Mohammed Sahib?' and you will see a tremendous decline in Mohammed's rabid followers.

Did anyone advocate "indiscriminate" acts?

How do you propose to punish a suicide bomber, if you aren't willing to take the step of letting it be known that the blood money that the Saudis and Iraqis are paying will only buy family funerals? That's how the King of Jordan scraped the offal that was Abu Nidal off the face of the earth. His intelligence apparatus killed not just the terrorists who threatened his life and that of his family, but their families as well. They are no longer a factor because he destroyed them, root and branch.

Your "moral high ground" will be a cemetery on the hill if you're not willing to fight at the level of your opponent.

We can't [b]prevent[/b] bad things from happening, even in America. Somehow we have learned to expect that life will always be good, all the time.  Never has been, and can't ever be perfectly safe.  Never.

We have to have a reasoned and strong response, as Jarhead22 pointed out quite well.  

"Kill them all" is just as stupid a response as "hide, they'll never hurt us."

I agree completely, as well as with "The Chicago Approach."

My bad, I just misinterpreted what you wrote. :)

[rolleyes]

Your naive outlook worries me. I know of 100 inexpensive ways a motivated person easily could cause enourmous damage to the American population.


The German's in WW2 overestimated their power and were defeated.

Blaze, you think that if the US withdraws from Saudia Arabia (Even when we were invited by their Govt) and Palestine (where exactly are those Americans in Palestine. You still haven't told us that.)  the terrorists will just go home and leave the US alone.  That is the most NAIVE and unrealistic thing I have heard in a long long time!  And I've heard some goodies...

I give anti-American alliances a second thought because I heard the Germans got defeated by an alliance.

Are you an actual Nazi?

Don't you have some boots that need licking?

If you are basically asking, how do we prevent another 9/11? I don't know. But, I do know that it will not be by following the knee-jerk "obliteration philosophy" and "kill 'em all" reaction, proposed by many.

That is advocacy born of frustration and lack of alternatives – because it is simple and so much easier than looking for real, viable alternatives! And, it's major flaw is: Where do you stop? Kill the Palestinians? Kill all Arabs? Kill all Muslims? Kill all their supporters – here, as well as overseas? Kill anyone who might be supporting them? How about kill you? You look Arabic to me?

To have any real chance of sucess, you must first know your enemy. And, we seem to know precious little about the MoFo's who perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities. I'm not talking about I.D., I mean what makes them tick!

It seems to me that we in the west, can easily embrace the immediacy of a concept like going out with guns blazing, but, we cannot understand the calm and long-term decision to become a suicide bomber any more than we understood the Kama Kazi (sp?) of the east.

As I said, I don't know the answer – and I am not suggesting that we cosy-up with those who indescriminately kill innocents. But, unless we do learn to "know the enemy", it's really going to be f*cking hard to stop some one who needs nothing more than a box of matches to create havoc, or some scrap metal to derail a train!

All this breast-beating about kill 'em first crap relieves the tension and makes us feel brave. It sounds great – real patriotic – but, in reality, it's just so much puffery and pointless bluster – and an unrealistic solution to a very real problem.

Struck a little too close to home for ya, huh sport?  Sounds like you have a bad case of group think.  Can't take a shite without permission from the big bad terrorists?

Edited:  So you are outraged at a perfect stranger posting on an internet board, but can't get up the balls to condemn what happened on 9-11-2001.  You truly are pathetic.

I did not say it would be easy, in fact it may be the longest war we have ever had. The indiscriminate acts I was speaking of were of the kill them all variety found in most of this thread. We should not kill a nation for the acts of a few hundred. We should, however, kill the several hundred and maybe their families as in the Abu Nidal example. But there is no reason to go to war with a specific religion or nation....at this point. Keeping an eye on this is the moral high ground that I was referring to. We had, in America, cases of Arabs being murdered for their race...did I mention that the people killed were mostly Americans? This knee jerk reaction is exactly the things we need to stay away from. Limit the people we kill to exactly the people trying to kill Americans, or those that finance the killing of Americans.

You wish I was outraged. I'm merely saying that while you exhibit the bravado of a Nazi, you also, like the Nazis, seem to overestimate the power of your country to just start killing indiscriminately without getting in trouble for it.

I'm not against America's doing some killing, but I'm against poorly planned killing that would cause the rest of the world to gang up and defeat us.

wiggy762's plan sounds good to me, if it would work; but I'm not entirely confident that our intelligence agencies could lead us to the targets that would cause the desired outcome.

I volunteer to do sniping, poisoning, and charge-laying, while djk bravely distracts the enemy and draws their fire.

At the risk of being labelled a terrorist-lover, I agree with stcyr that it's important to know who we're up against. Pretending that the America-haters are Satan, or dumb, or powerless is only going to misguide our strategy.

I do think that if we reduced our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and reduced our military presence in the Middle East, it would take much of the wind out of the sails of the anti-Americans who publicly criticize America for inhabiting the Middle East. This is not the only approach I'm willing to entertain, but if it's what's best for the country, then I'm not going to overlook it.

And was lying when I said I had an emotional response to 9-11. I'm just tired of people yelling at because I accept that people die in wars.

Get real. The rest of the world couldn't even gang up & defeat Serbia.

Where did I say we should start killing indiscriminately?  You are putting words in my mouth I did not say.  Also, you still have not proven to myself or anyone else on this board how the US is "inhabiting the middle east".  You really need to come to grips with reality.  Calling other people names will not change the fact that some people want to kill you just because you are an American.  It doesn't matter what presence the US has in the middle east.  It doesn't matter how much self loathing you have for yourself or the US.  It's time to grow up and realize that not everyone in this world is going to like you.

Because Switzerland found a niche, filled it, and does absolutely the bare minimum as far as outside interaction. The are not a superpower, do not desire to be, and will not be by their own choice. They are very quietly going about their business, and seldom if ever even so much as brush shoulders with others in a crowded room. How, they avoid the crowded room. They are very good at the things that they do, remain neutral at every opportunity, and stand for nothing but themselves. They have not been forced to do that militarily in quite some time because they don't meddle. They don't ask where the money in their banks comes from or why, they do not care, only wish to do profitable business. They export primarily high quality products, without bias beyond who can pay for the merchandice.

The Swiss are not bent on creating the world in their likeness, merely existing within the world as it is.

We need Rainbow Six!!  [8D]

USP40C,

You could probably make exactly the same arguements for the drug cartels in Columbia.

Switzerland is a small, land-locked country that would die without imports of essential fuels etc. Their size and geography determines their policies. The Swiss have little opton but to simply react to history making events.

However, the U.S. is big enough and strong enough not to make history. That's the difference!

In part that came out wrong. I did not mean to sound like I feel that the US is in the wrong. However we have definitely had our nose in places where it didn't belong a time or two. My point was not to knock the US in any way, or to build up Switzerland as some kind of "model state" they are nothing to be envied, and in fact are nothing more than a big bank for all intents and purposes.

But B-O-G did ask a question, and I gave him what I thought was all in all an accurate answer. You are correct that there is really nothing they can do to change their situation, so they have accepted it.

There are however a lot of people in the world who do view the US as I unintentionally portrayed us, so it does bear some consideration whether we agree with them or not. I personally think that if the people and leaders of these nations would grow up a little, quit acting like bickering five year olds, and try to make something of their country, most of them could. But they will not as long as they can point the finger at us and blame "evil" America.

Capture the Oilfields of Middle East - Tax the Crap out of the Arabs to pay for our Military presence there to keep them in check - Let the Russians do whatever they want to do to take care of their problems.  Move all the liberals in USA to Israel, Give Israel California and New York.  Buy all the Chinese Weapons to keep them happy and ship all those to Australia under black market. Feed Europe with the Oil in return to keep their traps shut.  Ban UN and send Kofi to Antarctica. Sink Indonesia. And ...
That's all for now.

the US as a military power is not in question.. if we are attacked we will defend and we have the power and the means to destroy our enemy ... militaryly speaking . the proplem is as jarhead said... we are attacked and the powers that be will  do [b]NOTHING[b] ...
the bastards know that when they do something that we will do nothing ... hell we as a people will bitch and moan if we do something... thats the proplem. the us leaders will let the hippy bastards dictate the repsonse ..

BTW why the hell did the US agree to give money to the palistines to rebuild? if they never have to clean up thier own mess when will they ever stop? they brought the destruction of thier homes on themselves why are we paying them?

How to stop the America-haters from killing us?  

View Quote

alot of people would object to the US killing them all and making a new parking lot over there... fine dont kill them... simply let them kill themselves.  let them feel the pain of war the horror of actual sustained fighting.. let them fight in the fields not on the busstops..
if you lose and you keep fighting.. great call yourself A martor if you wish but dont be suprised when a cobra gunship blows your ass up on the way to recruit a new martor.. be proud that you died for your cause.... but do not cry to the world that babies were killed .. yes they were killed but guess what you killed them.. stop being a god damn martor and start being a soldier fight, win/lose.. fight like men not like pussy asses hiding and killing 10 people on theway to the market...
what do they not understand..  you bomb them... they bomb, snipe, gunship your ass..
stop crying about how the IDF came in to your house at 3 am while in the background we can all see suicide packs that you where on your way to deliver...[/rant]

There was a time if anybody messed with us we smacked them so damn hard everyone in the room heard it. Violent people only respect a eqaul or greater capacity for violence.

As has been pointed out already, we damn near encouraged this crap.

yup we damn near encouraged it.. but oh no lets not piont that out to the govt officals that are responsable.. might look bad on the party..or they might only have two years before they retire, why ruin thier carrer..
lets all just hold hands and sing "com-by-wa"(sp) and the prolem will ethier go away or it will fall on the next admistration..

sad.
so damn sad.